Annually, CGI leaders around the world meet face-to-face with business and IT executives to gather their perspectives on the trends affecting their enterprises, including business and IT priorities, IT spending and investment plans. In 2019, we conducted in-person interviews with 152 client executives in state, provincial and local government who report the need to continue to digitize citizen services is reinforced in this year’s top trends and business priorities, supported by the top IT priority of modernization.

Focus on citizens’ digital expectations and cybersecurity continues

For the second straight year, state, provincial and local government executives cite becoming a digital organization to meet citizen expectations as the most impactful trend for their agencies. 
State and provincial digital transformation 2019
The second top trend is protecting through cybersecurity, followed by coping with budget pressures through IT consolidation and process automation. Assuring regulatory compliance rises to fourth most impactful, and greater use of public and private cloud is now fifth.
Transforming the citizen digital experience topped the industry trends in 2018. Protecting through cybersecurity was second, followed by budget pressures, attracting and retaining new talent, and assuring regulatory compliance.
2018 year-on-year comparison - Protecting through cybersecurity was the top industry trend for 2018

 

Missing media item.

Key findings

More strategies in place, results taking time

State and provincial digital transformation 2019
*Includes enterprise strategy and enterprise strategy extending to external ecosystem

When asked if their organization has a defined digital transformation strategy, 80% of executives answer yes. Of those, 31% report the strategy is enterprise-wide, and 12% report it also extends to external ecosystem partners. Of those with an enterprise-wide strategy, only 2% report that strategy is producing results.

  Explore how organizations are gaining value from their enterprise digital transformation strategy.

Cultural change and change management is the top challenge

Cultural change and change management is still the top barrier to digital transformation for executives in this sector, followed by the challenges of technology constraints and attracting and retaining digital talent. 

Cloud adoption lags other industries

State and provincial cloud usage 2019
*Percentages represent "yes" answers. Executives can select multiple cloud usage types. "No" and "other" answers are not shown.

This year state, provincial and local government executives share how their agencies are using cloud-based solutions: 33% are using them for their own organization, 2% for citizens and customers, and 32% for both. Additionally, they indicated how their organization’s cloud usage is divided between private, public and hybrid clouds (as shown in the above chart). When asked if their agency has mechanisms in place to locate where key data assets are stored in the cloud, 32% report they do not have clarity on this question.

Benchmarking clients’ satisfaction with their own IT organization

Benchmarking clients’ satisfaction with their own IT organization
Scores from 1 to 10, with 10 most satisfied (showing 3 out of 10 available attributes)

For the second year, business and IT executives interviewed ranked their satisfaction with their own IT organizations based on the 10 key attributes of a world-class IT organization. When it comes to alignment of IT services to business needs, central and federal government business and IT leaders have lower overall satisfaction than do executives in other industries, including the government sector as a whole.

CGI can provide clients with a discussion of all available benchmarking, including each client’s positioning, on topics such as digital maturity, IT spending, IT satisfaction, innovation investments and more. Contact us to learn more.

Learn how CGI helps clients on their journey to world-class IT.

Download the State and provincial infographic

View infographic summary

Contact us to benchmark your organization against the latest trends

 

State, provincial and local government

Request a copy of the full report

Also see the industry summaries for our 2018 and 2017 CGI Client Global Insights.